William Twisse – a 17th-century Polemicist To bow or not to bow? It was a key question for ministers in the Church of England, in relation to the Lord’s table. Many believed that bowing or kneeling before the table…
Katherine Parr and Her Role in the English Reformation Katherine Parr (1512-1548) is often remembered as the last of Henry VIII’s wives. But she was much more than that. She was an important writer and a major player in the English…
Chad B. Van Dixhoorn, God’s Ambassadors: The Westminster Assembly and the Reformation of the English Pulpit, 1643-1653, Studies on the Westminster Assembly (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017). 215pp. Hardcover. $40. There is a growing interest in the history—and…
Johannes Bogerman and His Powdering Speech “Dimittimini exiteI” (“You are dismissed, get out!”) With these imperious words, Johannes Bogerman (1576-1637), president of the Synod of Dordt, expressed what many of the delegates were had been painfully thinking. The Remonstrants…
It is not surprising that a book addressing the presence, nature, and function of the Old and New Testament should have a profound impact on us. Yet, much of what has been written about the Bible has been an attack…
The Elizabethan polymath, Francis Bacon, counseled, “Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.” Undoubtedly sound advice. But of the more than 300,000 books published annually in US, how is one…
There seems to be a never-ending market in Christian circles for books on guidance. The reason for this, of course, is that we as Christians (like all other human beings) want to make right decisions and choices in life. We…
Charlotte of Bourbon – from Runaway Nun to Self-Sacrificing Wife For twelve long years, Charlotte tried to assert her legal rights to leave Notre-Dame de Jouarre, the abbey which she had been forced to join. Finally, in February 1572,…
In our last three articles that dealt with the sin-related petitions in the Lord’s Prayer we noted in passing how striking it is that such a large proportion of this prayer is focused on our fallenness and failure. This surely…
The triplet of sin-related requests embedded in the Lord’s Prayer ends with the shortest, but in many ways the most potent of them all: ‘Deliver us from evil’. As many commentators point out, there is a measure of ambiguity over…
